Virginia Vital Records #1, 1600s-1800s

The records referenced date mainly from the 1600s to the 1800s and represent one of the largest existing collections of Virginia records. In general, the records you'll find here will provide you with the date and location of an important family event, plus the names of the individuals involved.

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Genealogies of Long Island Families, 1600s-1800

This database contains images of both volumes of Genealogies of Long Island Families, as well as one volume of Long Island Source Records. These are comprised of articles originally appearing in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, one of the foremost publishers of Long Island genealogies. 

The three volumes, originally published by Genealogical Publishing Company, contain references to approximately 60,000 individuals from the present-day Suffolk, Kings, and Queens counties and represents one of the largest existing collections of Long Island genealogies and records. 

What you'll find: 

• Genealogies, censuses, newspaper notices, town records (including deaths and marriages in some cases)
• Bible records, wills, and deeds
• Some genealogies go so far as to establish the English or Dutch origins of a family.
  

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Pennsylvania Vital Records, 1700s-1800s

Got Pennsylvania ancestors? How about tracing them using one of the largest bodies of Pennsylvania source material ever published? More than 87,000 individuals and every article about births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths that has appeared in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine. 

Originally published in three volumes as Pennsylvania Vital Records by the Genealogical Publishing Company, these entries date from 1701 to 1882 and come from all regions of Pennsylvania.

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How to Organize Family History Paperwork: A Genealogist's Guide to Effective Record Keeping

Family history research can quickly create mountains of paperwork. This book give you step-by-step instruction to effectively organize and digitize your genealogy research papers.

You'll learn how to:

• create a personalized filing system to suit your genealogy research style and experience 
• turn your computer into a top-notch filing clerk and research assistant by establishing a clear, consistent naming pattern for files and folders 
• Scan old paper records and store them electronically to save space and make them easier to find 
• make digital copies of original source documents 
• organize your family history research to pass on to future generations

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Pennsylvania Family Histories #1, pre-1600 to 1900s

Spanning over four centuries of Pennsylvania history, approximately 62,000 individuals are cited here. Several hundred family history articles included touch on families of English, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, and French origins. The Bible records reference hundreds of families, many of them interrelated, who lived in Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries...

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http://www.genealogylookups.com/cd163.htm

Planning Your Genealogy Research Trip

Documents make up the core of all Genealogy research. These provide proof that your claims to those you include in your Family History really belong there. They provide information that you may not be able to obtain anywhere else. Some can give you insight into the lives of your family, where they lived, their occupation or even their religion. They bring the past to life.

With so many documents being obtained online today, you may think it would be a waste of time to take a Genealogy Research Trip (GRT). However, there is a tremendous amount of information in various repositories across the Nation that will take years to get online or it may never be put online. This is because it takes time and money to scan in or input documents and information. In smaller communities they just don’t have the people power or the resources to do this. Also, Genealogy is not, I repeat, not the primary purpose of repositories that keep documents. Their main purpose is to retain, recover and archive documents. Genealogy is a secondary thing for them so they do not feel the urgent need to upload all their files for those of us seeking answers. They are generally more than happy to help you find whatever you are looking for but this is a “side business” for them. In order to obtain some of the important documents you may need you will have to either write to the repository and pay a fee for them to find it and send it to you or you can make a trip there yourself. So where do you need to go to find information on your Ancestors? Actually this all depends on what information or documents you are hoping to find.

It doesn’t matter if you are just beginning your search for your Ancestors or if you already have 5000 of them already listed in your tree, at some point you will probably want to make a GRT. There are several reasons why you may want to do this. First and foremost would be to visit libraries, court houses, grave sites and other repositories in a particular State or City for the express purpose of searching for documents and documentation. The second reason may be to visit relatives so you can ask questions, obtain photographs or interview them about your family history. The third reason may be to see where your Ancestors had lived. All of these are valid reasons, but the question may arise “How can I make the most of my trip?” This book will take you through each step of planning your GRT, show you how to be organized and prepare you for a successful trip.

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Virginia Family Histories #1, pre-1600 to 1900s

If your family line runs through Virginia, this database is worth a look. Referencing approximately 65,000 individuals from all parts of Virginia, information included dates from 1600 to 1900. Here you have all five volumes of Genealogies of Virginia Families, a collection of family history articles compiled from 84 years of The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 

You will find many lines of descent traced through seven or eight generations, covering three or four centuries...

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http://www.genealogylookups.com/cd162.htm

State Index: Upstate NY, 1685-1910

This index of New York State records consists of references to city directories, tax lists, church records, military rosters, Bible records, and much more. These documents were all published in four upstate New York quarterlies dating from the late 1600s to the early 1900s...

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http://www.genealogylookups.com/cd160.htm

Genealogy: Your Family History, Doing It Right The First Time

Finding out about your family’s history can be an exciting endeavor. Keeping track of all the information and placing it all into some kind of organized fashion however, can be quite a task. There are so many Genealogy websites, software programs and ways to store your findings that it can become overwhelming. It is sometimes hard to determine what should be included in your Family Tree and what isn’t necessary.

Whether you are just beginning your Genealogy journey or already have a Family Tree, this book will help you with answering those important questions: How do I start? How do I organize it easily? Where can I find more information and sources? What documents do I need to prove my findings? In this book you will find the answers to these questions and more. Learning how to organize your documents and photos in an easy to follow way will help you to be organized. Being organized will ensure that the information you are imputing into your Tree is correct. Doing it right the first time will eventually not only save you time but a lot of frustration. You will end up with Family History that is readable, accurate and a source of pride. It can become something you can pass on to future generations.

If you have already started a Family Tree but it has become a chore, this book can help you get it right the second time around. This is the position I found myself in and the reason I decided to write this book. I began my Genealogy quest over 15 years ago. At that time I did not have a computer and did not know where to begin. Once I did get online and found the wonders of the internet and all the places I could find information about my family I just haphazardly saved it all, both in hard copy and on hard drive. I grew my tree in so many directions I got lost as to who was who and what document actually belonged to which family member. I just accepted other peoples research without comparing their facts with mine and I ended up with a mess. I had to basically start over again. Putting my current Tree together the correct way, the organized way has made me enjoy this journey of discovery again. 

Doing it right the first time!

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Early New York Families, 1600s-1900s

More than 338,000 individuals are referenced within this collection, covering the entire state of New York. Although especially useful for the genealogist, family histories such as these can be very difficult to locate since they are not often published for wide distribution. A family history is a written account of a family's immediate and extended relationships. Along with biographical information on each family member, you'll often find illustrations or photographs of individuals or significant places. Generally you'll learn details of personal characteristics and your ancestors' daily lives that aren't usually available in other genealogical records...

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http://www.genealogylookups.com/cd157.htm

Civil War Confederate Pension Applications Index

Presented in questionnaire form, a soldier's application lists the Veteran's place of enlistment, unit, period of service, battles participated in, and whether he was wounded or captured. Pension applications also included information on place of birth, number of children, and value of personal and real property owned by Veteran. 

If the pension application was filed by a widow, you can learn even more information. Their applications list place of birth for both widow and husband as well as the names and ages of any children. Since proof of marriage was required for admission to the pension rolls, a copy of the marriage certificate is often found in widow applications. You may also find correspondence between the applicant and the Pension Board, letters or sworn affidavits attesting to a Veteran's character and the nature of his military service, and abstracts of the Veteran's service record furnished by the Federal War Department. 

It is important to note that while all of the individuals listed were residents of Tennessee when they applied for pensions, they did not necessarily serve the Confederacy in Tennessee.

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http://www.genealogylookups.com/cd155.htm

Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History

Ancestral Leaves follows one family through six hundred years of Chinese history and brings to life the epic narrative of the nation, from the fourteenth century through the Cultural Revolution. The lives of the Ye family—“Ye” means “leaf” in Chinese—reveal the human side of the large-scale events that shaped modern China: the vast and destructive rebellions of the nineteenth century, the economic growth and social transformation of the republican era, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Cultural Revolution under the Chinese Communists. Joseph W. Esherick draws from rare manuscripts and archival and oral history sources to provide an uncommonly personal and intimate glimpse into Chinese family history, illuminating the changing patterns of everyday life during rebellion, war, and revolution...

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Family Tree Memory Keeper: Your Workbook for Family History, Stories and Genealogy

Record Your Family History!

From the editors of Family Tree Magazine, this workbook makes it easy to record and organize your family history.

Family Tree Memory Keeper helps you keep track of basic genealogy information and special family memories, including traditions, heirloom histories, family records, newsworthy moments, family migrations and immigrations, old recipes, important dates, and much more. 

This book features:

• Dozens of fill-in pages to record all your essential family information. 
• Convenient paperback format for writing and photocopying pages. 
• Space for mounting photographs. 
• Maps to mark your family's migration routes. 
• Tips for researching your family history. 
• A comprehensive list of additional resources.

Use Family Tree Memory Keeper to log your genealogy research. Bring it to family get-togethers to gather and share information. Create an invaluable record of your ancestry for future generations.

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A Young People's History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror

A Young People's History of the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people. A Young People's History of the United States is also a companion volume to The People Speak, the film adapted from A People's History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn in the volumes of A Young People’s History of the United States presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals...

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Since its initial publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell one million copies in its various editions.

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education" beginning with the pre-Columbian period and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre.

In this revised and updated edition, James Loewen surveys six new high school history textbooks written since the first edition of Lies was published. In his inimitable style, he adds material to each chapter noting where the new books have gotten more accurate and where they are still fatally flawed. Loewen also writes at length about the way these textbooks treat the 2001 terrorist attacks and our "response" in Iraq. In fact, while researching this new edition Loewen made the front page of the New York Times in 2006 when he discovered that publishers were passing off as original virtually identical passages on important recent events in a number of history books. And in yet another example of the failure of American history textbooks, he found that "celebrity" historians whose names appear as authors in some cases have never read, let alone written, the texts attributed to them...

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Sword of San Jacinto:: A Life of Sam Houston

"Sam Houston was one of the most remarkable figures in American history. He was a native of Virginia who as a soldier, stateman, and adventurer made his mark on the frontier in Tennessee and the Arkansas Territory and then went on to dominate the early history of Texas. Now, drawing on newly accessible archival material, in particular the more than five thousand letters and documents in the Andrew Jackson Houston Collection of the Texas State Archives, historian Marshall De Bruhl vividly re-creates the career of this larger-than-life hero. In a narrative brimming with fascinating details, De Bruhl captures Houston in all his complexity. A frontiersman who lived among the Cherokee Indians for many years - he was the adopted son of Chief Ooleteka and a full citizen of the Cherokee Nation - Houston became a passionate defender of Indian rights.

As a soldier, Sam Houston served under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 - and ensured Texas independence in 1836 with his atonishing victory over Santa Anna and the Mexican army at San Jacinto. As a politician, Houston was a Tennessee congressman at age thirty and then governor at age thirty-six. He then went on to be the first elected president of the Republic of Texas and one of the first senators from the new state. Because of his ardent defense of the Union and his refusal to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, he was deposed as governor of Texas in 1861.

Houston's personal life was as tumultous as his political and military careers. He married three times, always to much younger women. The first marriage, to an eighteen-year-old, ended mysteriously when she left him only eleven weeks later, whereupon he resigned the governership of Tennessee and fled to the west and exile among his old Cherokee friends. It was there he married Tiana, the beautiful niece of Chief Ooleteka. Years later, at age forty-six, he married a woman of twenty, who bore eight children during their devoted and happy marriage. Although Houston died ignored and vilified by those whose independence who had ensured, the eclipse of his reputation was brief. His fellow Texans soon acknowledged his central place in their history, and he is revered today as the father of Texas and [as] its greatest hero."...

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Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution

Hardly were the last shots fired at the Alamo before the Texas Revolution entered the realm of myth and controversy. French visitor Frederic Gaillardet called it a "Texian Iliad" in 1839, while American Theodore Sedgwick pronounced the war and its resulting legends "almost burlesque." 

In this highly readable history, Stephen L. Hardin discovers more than a little truth in both of those views. Drawing on many original Texan and Mexican sources and on-site inspections of almost every battlefield, he offers the first complete military history of the Revolution. From the war's opening in the "Come and Take It" incident at Gonzales to the capture of General Santa Anna at San Jacinto, Hardin clearly describes the strategy and tactics of each side. His research yields new knowledge of the actions of famous Texan and Mexican leaders, as well as fascinating descriptions of battle and camp life from the ordinary soldier's point of view. 

This award-winning book belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in Texas or military history.

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The Hatfields and the McCoys

The Hatfield-McCoy feud has long been the most famous vendetta of the southern Appalachians. Over the years it has become encrusted with myth and error. Scores of writers have produced accounts of it, but few have made any real effort to separate fact from fiction. Novelists, motion picture producers, television script writers, and others have sensationalized events that needed no embellishment. 

Using court records, public documents, official correspondence, and other documentary evident, Otis K. Rice presents an account that frees, as much as possible, fact from fiction, event from legend. He weighs the evidence carefully, avoiding the partisanship and the attitude of condescension and condemnation that have characterized many of the writings concerning the feud. 

He sets the feud in the social, political, economic, and cultural context of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining the legacy of the Civil War, the weakness of institutions such as the church and education system, the exaggerated importance of family, the impotence of the law, and the isolation of the mountain folk, Rice gives new meaning to the origins and progress of the feud. These conditions help explain why the Hatfield and McCoy families, which have produced so many fine citizens, could engage in such a bitter and prolonged vendetta.

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Courthouse Research for Family Historians: Your Guide to Genealogical Treasures

Finally--the only guidebook devoted exclusively to research in America's courthouses. Full of essentials starting with preparation, interacting with the clerks, using the indexes, and what to expect to find in each courthoiuse office. But it doesn't stop there. Evaluating the records and using them to solve genealogical problems are included. For those who can't travel to the courthouse personally, use of the Internet, microfilm, and published books of abstracts are discussed.

Tips galore from an author who has researched in more than 500 courthouses.

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